The Biggest Addiction in Corporates?

Whom would you hire to lead your 500-member organisation?

Dileep runs a 100-member organisation. He works 12+ hours every day. His calendar is packed. He spends six hours in meetings. He solves every problem in the company, takes 20+ decisions every day and knows everything about everything. He is the smartest person in the company. Everybody is in awe of him.

Sid also runs a similar company. He works eight hours. He spends less than two hours in meetings and takes just 2–3 decisions a day. He doesn't know everything about the company's operations and is too lazy to find out. He doesn't speak much and is usually not the smartest person in the room.

You must be thinking: Is there even a competition?

Dileep wins hands down.

But my vote would be for Sid.

And even if I didn't have Sid, I probably wouldn't hire Dileep.

Because Dileep suffers from one of the biggest addictions in the corporate world:

Being busy

At the top, being busy is a bane, not a boon. If Dileep is so busy managing a 100-member organisation, how will he manage a 500-member organisation? He can't possibly find 60 hours every day.

In my opinion, busy is just a softer, more polite word for inefficient.

The deeper addiction: being needed

But there is an even deeper addiction among leaders. Being needed.

If nobody needs your approval, you feel less important. If nobody calls you to solve a problem, you feel less valuable. So you keep yourself at the centre of everything.

You attend meetings you don't need to attend. You make decisions your team should make. You solve problems your team should solve. You become the smartest person in the room and the biggest bottleneck in the organisation.

And then you proudly say, “I am extremely busy.”

When hustle becomes identity

For many leaders, hard work and hustle become a badge of honour. It becomes their identity. If they don't work hard, they feel guilty. And if there is no work, they create work.

They meddle into everything. Micromanage the team. Diversify into too many things. Make everyone work as hard as they do. And then wonder why the team is exhausted and attrition is high.

They don't have time for their families. They don't sleep well. They don't exercise. But they take pride in all of it.

They also don't build the systems and capabilities that would make themselves less necessary. Because deep down, they have become addicted to being the smartest person in the office.

They forget that a leader's number one job is not to show the team how valuable he is. It is to make other people valuable.

Too busy to become better

And they are too busy to work on themselves. Where is the time to read, learn, get feedback or become a better leader when they can get a dopamine hit from solving 100 fires every day?

Great leaders understand something very different. Their job is not to make every decision. Their job is to build people who can make the decisions.

They build systems. They empower people. They create leaders. They deliberately make themselves less important to the day-to-day functioning of the organisation.

That is how companies scale.

The leader who is indispensable at 100 people may be completely useless at 500. The leader who has made himself unnecessary at 100 may be exactly the leader you need at 500.

So, are you a Dileep or a Sid?

If you are a Dileep, I have one piece of advice:

Time to get lazy.